She could smell the whisky on his breath, and she feared he was in his cups. The way he had taken her from Alan's bed—it was either the act of a madman or someone who was completely sotted. Cam had never given her any indication that he would do something so utterly insane as to abduct her on her wedding night. If he was capable of going to such lengths, there was no telling what else he might do.
As one of his men came running toward them carrying a lantern, he drew on the reins and waited. Sorcha pulled away from him and sat a little straighter, staring directly ahead. She yanked the plaid tightly around her frozen body. She was warm only where his legs encased her buttocks and outer thighs.
"Rouse some of the men," Cam told the approaching guard. "There might be trouble." The man nodded, and she could see from the corner of her eye that he doggedly kept his gaze averted from her. "Aye, milord."
Cam glanced back at the path they had just climbed. She followed his gaze and saw no evidence they'd been followed. Where was Alan? Surely he would do something. Surely he wouldn't let Cam get away with this.
But what could he do? Alan was a minor laird, and while his men were loyal, they were few, and he had little recourse against a powerful lord like Cam.
"Send six men to MacDonald's and bring MacLean home. If he's under attack"—Cam paused, frowning—"try your damndest not to shed too much blood," he finished. Sorcha's body convulsed, and a strangled sound emerged from her throat before she could prevent it. He tightened his arm around her waist in warning, and his plaid slipped from Sorcha's forehead, revealing her face to the guard. His jaw went slack and recognition flared in his eyes.
"Go now," Cam growled.
Dropping his gaze, the man recovered and made a quick bow. "Aye, milord." Straightening, he risked a final glance at Sorcha, who lifted her head and glared daggers at him, before he turned and strode away.
"Too much of a coward to kill him yourself, Cam," Sorcha whispered, staring after the man, "that you must order your henchmen to do it for you?" She wrapped her arms tightly around her body to prevent herself from shaking.
"Hush." He dismounted and lifted Sorcha off. She was stiff in his arms as he set her down and straightened the plaid over her shoulders. "Alan MacDonald can take care of himself. It's clear you don't know much about him."
She pressed her lips into a thin line and remained silent. Inwardly, she raged at him, cursed him for a fool. What had he done? In one fell swoop, he had put her well-being in jeopardy. He was so self-absorbed, he'd probably not even considered the repercussions this mad abduction would have in her life. Her marriage was in jeopardy—Alan would likely reject her now. And her position as a respectable woman . ..
"Now, it's your choice, Sorcha. You can walk inside on your own power, or I will carry you slung over my shoulder like a sack of grain. Which shall it be?" She met his gaze full'on, letting her anger show in her eyes. "You may trust that you will never carry me like a sack of grain, for I will scratch your eyes out before I allow you to throw me over your shoulder again."
Cam shrugged carelessly, rousing her ire even more. She clenched her fists at her sides. Arrogant bastard!
"Very well, then. You will walk." He gestured gallantly at the living quarters, a rectangular stone building with a square tower rising from one end. "After you, my lady." She surveyed her surroundings rapidly, calculating her odds at escape. It was hopeless. Even if Cam didn't catch her, and given his long muscular legs he could easily do so, the gates were closed and well guarded.
Tossing her head, she turned and marched toward the building, holding the plaid tightly wrapped around her body. Her feet were bare, but she didn't wince as she walked proudly across the stone clearing. The wool covered her only to her knees, and the heat of Cam's gaze simmered over her bare calves as she stepped onto the landing and opened the front door.
A servant appeared in the doorway leading to the cellar stairs but slunk away upon glancing at Cam's face. Sorcha resisted turning to see his expression. She hesitated as a sudden, unwelcome despair flooded through her. She knew this building so very well. She had explored every part of it during her childhood. Until August, her father had served as the old earl's factor, and they had lived in a cottage on the grounds along with her younger brothers and sister. When Cam's father had died last winter,
Cam had returned from England to manage his inheritance. After helping Cam straighten out his affairs, Sorcha's father had left the earl's service to spend the remainder of his days with his clansmen in Glen-finnan. .
"I suppose I am not expected to return to my old bed in the cottage, my lord." She hated the defeated, pleading quality in her voice.
"You will go to my bedchamber," he said softly. He came up behind her, set his hands on her shoulders, and pulled her back against his solid chest. He bowed his head and took in a deep breath against her hair. His lips brushed over her ear. "You know where it is."
"Aye, I do." She stiffened under his touch, and he pushed her forward, turning her toward the staircase that led up to his bedchamber.
Sorcha sucked in a breath, but then calmed herself as she released it. He wouldn't hurt her. That rare balance in Cam—the edge between stark, unpolished strength and generous tenderness—was what had attracted her to him to begin with. Cam possessed an innate compassion and kindness he hid from the world but had revealed to her in their lovemaking. She had always felt safe with him, from their first touch. As mad as his actions had been tonight, she couldn't believe Cam would use violence on her. She glanced at him over her shoulder and spoke softly. "I don't fear you. You may think you have power over me, my lord. That might have once been true, but no longer." His dark eyes hardened. "Go."
She turned back to the stairs and stared at them but didn't move. "You dishonor me on my wedding night," she said dully. He already had shamed her, and now he would make it worse by bedding her not two hours after she'd lain with her husband for the first time.
"Honor has naught to do with this."
Oh, it had everything to do with this.
"You intend to rape me in your bedchamber. You wish to make my husband a cuckold." Even as she said it, she could not bring herself to truly fear him raping her. But she did fear his bedchamber, the memories it possessed, the power he had once held over her. He stood close enough that she could smell him, spicy sandalwood with a raw, masculine musk beneath. Lord help her, but as much as her heart rebelled against him, her body remembered his touch, even after his crazed behavior.
Cam tightened his hands on her shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was husky. "It is me you want, Sorcha. I am the one you desire in your bed. Not Alan MacDonald, and not anyone else."
A tremble rippled down her spine. Yes, she'd wanted Cam, but that was in the past. Earlier tonight, she had wanted Alan. Wanted him badly.
Even if her body still desired Cam, she'd vowed to stay true to Alan until death. She could not live with herself if she broke that promise.
She spoke, forming her words carefully. "I gave Alan MacDonald my vow under God tonight. The instant I made that vow, everything else ceased to matter. I am his now. No one else's."
"No."
"Yes. I belong to him and no other."
"It isn't too late."
Sorcha laughed bitterly.
He slid his hand down her back over the rough wool of the plaid and gave her a soft nudge at the base of her spine. "Go upstairs."
She stepped forward. One foot in front of the other until she stood at the bottom of the staircase. He remained still, watching her, but then closed in behind her as she began to walk up. He followed her to the landing at the top and they progressed down the long hall. Floorboards creaked under their feet. When she reached the door to his bedchamber, she stopped and stared at it. Images of what had happened between them inside flashed through her mind. He had taken her on the green and black silk counterpane, on the hard planks of the floor, against a woolen wall hanging, on a bed of furs before the fire. In every position—her on top, on
her knees, on her back, her legs wrapped around his waist...
Very deliberately, he set his palms flat against the door, boxing her in with his arms. "Do you remember how we loved in there, Sorcha? The pleasure we shared?" Oh, she remembered, but she would not admit to it. She tilted her face at him with false bravado. "You are speaking of the fornication we indulged in? The sin?"
"But it didn't feel like sin to either of us, did it?" She looked back to the smooth, glossy planks of the door. "If I rot in hell for my sins, for certain it is God's will."
Cam tensed. "I imagine God desires us to reconcile our feelings for each other before he sends you to a life of servitude to a man you don't know."
"I have already reconciled my feelings. I thought you had too."
"You have entered into a marriage under false pretenses, so surely nothing is set in stone. You may have played the innocent on your wedding night, but when Alan learns of your lies—"
Her head whipped around. "How do you know—?" she gasped. He smiled, nuzzling her ear with his lips. "I watched, beautiful Sorcha. I watched you spread your bonnie legs for him and play the innocent."
Her body shuddered violently. She snapped her mouth shut, but her lips wobbled at their edges. He had eavesdropped on her tentative coming together with Alan earlier. She felt violated, the beauty of her joining with Alan forever sullied.
Finally, she forced herself to speak through her tight throat. "How ... dare you?"
"If you do not want to be watched, perhaps you should consider having curtains made so passersby cannot witness how sweetly you open your legs for strangers," She hated him, hated his arrogance. It was so ... English. He reached down and pushed on the handle. The door swung open. Cam's manservant jumped to his feet from the wing chair beside the fire.
"My lord?"
"Go, Duncan, I've no need of your services tonight."
Duncan bowed and met Sorcha's horrified gaze, his eyes widening as he recognized her. Cam nudged Sorcha inside so his servant could pass.
"He is my father's friend," she whispered, looking after him as he disappeared down the hall. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she wouldn't let them fall. "Duncan MacDougall will make certain all of Glen-finnan hears of this." Her body quaked and she dropped her face into her hands. "Everyone will know I came to your bedchamber tonight, on the night of my wedding, that I— Oh Lord, I am disgraced. Alan will be—"
"Alan can bloody well take care of himself!" Cam spat. "Why do you care so much about Alan when he is nothing to you?"
Seeming to require something upon which to vent his fury, Cam slammed the door shut. She looked coldly up at him. "Alan is an honorable man. And he is my husband." He gave her an equally frosty stare. "I know Alan MacDonald's character far more intimately than you."
"You have offended him. He will demand satisfaction." Cam gave a harsh laugh, drew aside a delicate embroidered green and black silk bed curtain, and brusquely tied it to the post before sit' ting on the edge of the mattress. "What can he do? He knows he cannot rise against so lofty a personage as the Earl of Camdonn." He said the last with bitterness, pushing his hand through his short dark hair. She remained in place standing just inside the bedroom door, her eyes narrowed at him.
"And what do you plan to do, my lord? Keep me locked up here forever? Again, I ask, what is it you want from me?"
Something passed over his face, an emotion she couldn't comprehend, but he blinked it away and let his eyes rake over her, resting on her breasts beneath the plaid. The chill in the room had hardened her nipples, and they pushed against the wool.
"I want you." Staring at her chest, he took a step toward her. "I know the taste of you so intimately, it is part of me. I hunger for you, Sorcha. I've missed you. It's been too long."
"You cannot have me," she said with all the conviction she could muster, and was rewarded with Cam's subtle flinch. "I'm married ... I am an honorable lady, married to the laird—"
Cynically, he raised a brow.
He was right. She wasn't honorable—she'd lied to her husband on her wedding night. She threw up her hands. "Why, Cam? Why now? Why the night of my marriage?"
"I don't know." By the bewilderment in his expression, she sensed that he truly didn't understand his own motivation.
"It has been weeks since I left this place. Why didn't you come to me before?"
"I wanted to. I thought about you constantly." His lips thinned. "I thought it best not to interfere with your father's plans. I was a fool. I didn't know how strongly I'd feel about it until it happened, until I actually saw you—" His face settled into a hard mask of determination. "I won't stand by and watch someone take what is mine." She hissed out a breath. "I'm not yours. I never was."
"You always were. I was the one to take your maidenhead, was I not?" She turned away from him and strode to the window, a narrow, tall opening in the stone, probably once an arrow slit. She had to get away from him, from his handsome, brooding face, and the roiling emotions that passed over it in waves. She should still be in a murderous rage, but, as always, his emotion affected her. The dark eyes the villagers called cold she saw as soulful. Everyone assumed that his tight bearing and upright carriage signified arrogance and disdain, but she interpreted his posture as a mask for deep-seated insecurity and a need to be loved.
Cam had appealed to her on such a basic level from the very beginning. Power, money, dashing good looks—those were things that drew women to him but that Sorcha had always imagined herself immune to. No, she had been attracted to the intense feelings and strong soul-deep emotion buried behind the facade of the jaded debauchee. Right now, he hurt... It was written across his face like words on a page. He wanted her badly, and for the first time, she realized he truly believed himself in love with her. Yet as much as her heart panged in sympathy for him, she knew Cam only wanted her for selfish reasons.
"Aye, you took my maidenhead. You took that which is so precious to most women, and indeed, was precious to me. But did you ever have a mind to give anything back?" He frowned at her from across the room. "What do you mean?"
"I cared for you. More than a little." She rested her forehead against the stone sill and closed her eyes.
Seconds later, his hands settled on her shoulders, gentle this time. "I won't let you go, Sorcha. I want you with me."
"That's impossible." She straightened her spine even as her body yearned to relax against the hardness of his chest. Her throat constricted and she opened her palm against the cold glass.
She belonged to someone else. She'd slammed the coffin's lid on her relationship with Cam when her father had laid her hand in Alan's today, when the minister had bound them for life, literally and symbolically. She sighed. "I was never meant to be the mistress of a great man—I was meant to be the wife of a humble one."
"I never asked you to be my mistress, Sorcha."
"No. You merely assumed, with your typical arrogance, that I would not conceive of saying no."
"If you didn't desire me, you would have refused my advances."
"That is true." She turned to him, forcing him to release her shoulders. "But now it's different. Whether I desire you is of no consequence. I must refuse you. I have a sacred obligation to Alan MacDonald."
His lips turned down, and his eyes glinted in the meager light. "A man you know nothing of.”
"I made a vow, and I must honor it regardless of how little I know of him." She sighed. Before tonight Alan had been a virtual stranger to her. But now she felt like she knew Alan rather better than Cam might think. Alan was gentle and honorable. He made her feel safe, as safe as Cam once had.
More than anything, though, something powerful had happened between them when they'd joined. She couldn't name it, but remnants of it still trickled through her, firing her nerves.
"I know Alan MacDonald." Cam's voice was soft. Dangerous. His eyes took on a predatory gleam. "I can tell you all about him. What would you like to know, Sorcha?"
"I don't understand—"
>
"I met Alan in London. Later we went to Oxford together."
"You did?" She regretted the question instantly, for it revealed her ignorance.
"Aye. He was fulfilling his mother's legacy at the university. Did you know she was an English lady?"
"Of course."
"Disowned by her family for falling in love with a Highland barbarian. Yet her father must have retained some affection for her, because he held in trust a legacy for Alan. It was due to her health they returned south when Alan was a lad. A delicate Englishwoman, she could not endure our harsh climate once Alan's father died." Sorcha resisted covering her ears. It seemed blasphemous to be learning details about her husband from her ex-lover. "I do know all this," she said tightly. Bracing one arm on the window, he leaned forward, his lips brushing her temple. "Alan MacDonald taught me everything I know about how to pleasure a woman." Sorcha stiffened. She didn't want to hear about Cam's past exploits. Or Alan's. But Cam didn't stop. "Our goal was to visit every bawdy house in Oxford, to see how many women we could buy, how many we could take at once and in how many different ways. We wished to experience the ultimate debauchery. With my money and Alan's charm"— Cam's lips twisted in a sneer—"it wasn't difficult to accomplish." Sorcha turned to stare out the window into the darkness. Far off in the distance past the castle gate, a light flickered. Might Alan be out there, coming after her? But what could he do? Even if the whole population of the glen rose up to save her, Cam could order every soul slaughtered with a flick of his wrist.
"I don't want to hear any more." She glanced back him. "What will you do with me, Cam?"
His jaw twitched. "I'm not letting you go. You will not leave Cam-donn Castle."
Highland Obsession Page 3